[Tel Aviv U, Ethics, MA student] Omar Bargouti will be visiting LA: "Israels Control of Water as Tool of Apartheid and Means of Ethnic Cleansing"

This information is brought to you by Dr. Martin Sherman, a member of Israel Academia Monitor's Board of Advisers:

Dear friends,

Omar Bargouti, (a Tel Aviv University MA student), will be visiting LA shortly. Among other things he will attempt to make the claim that Israel is depriving the Palestinians of water as a measure of ethnic cleansing (see poster below)

PALESTINE: THIRSTING FOR JUSTICE - ISRAEL’S CONTROL OF WATER AS TOOL OF APARTHEID AND MEANS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING - LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL NOVEMBER 1

This attempt must be countered vigorously and rebuffed assertively. The truth is that the Palestinians' hydro-situation improved dramatically - indeed beyond all recognition - under Israeli administration.

For example , the overall area under cultivation increased by 160%, while agricultural output increased 12-fold in the period 1967-1989 (just prior to the Oslo process). This was facilitated by the adoption of modern water-efficient irrigation techniques such as sprinklers and drip irrigation by Palestinian farmers, instead of open channel or rain-fed irrigation that were prevalent before Israeli administration in these areas.

Water experts such as Daniel Hillel, underscore this reality. In his wide-ranging study of the Middle East water resources, Rivers of Eden: The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 1994), a book generally empathetic toward the Arab world, Hillel makes the following observation:

The Israeli occupation changed local agriculture profoundly. It introduced modern technology, including mechanization, precision tillage, pest control, plastic covering of crops for temperature control, high yielding varieties, postharvest processing of produce, marketing, and export outlets. It also introduced efficient methods of irrigation, including sprinkler and especially drip irrigation. Consequently, output increased greatly, and farming was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry./

Moreover, of the roughly 450 towns and villages in Judea and Samaria only 50 were connected to a running water system in June 1967, whereas the number rose to 260 by October 1991. The overall per capita consumption of fresh water by the Palestinians rose by almost 17% in the period 1967-2009 (from 86 MCM to 100 MCM) while Israeli per capita consumption fell by almost 300% (!) from 508 MCM to 170 MCM - with much of agricultural cultivation being converted to use of recycled waste water. (MCM = Million Cubic Meter). SEE http://www.teva.org.il/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/YossiDrayzen.ppt#21 - PowerPoint presentation provided by Israel's Water Authority.

So, is this a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech or unacceptable anti-Israeli/anti Jewish incitement? Is it conduct that can be considered compatible with, and protected by, academic freedom, which surely should be devoted to the pursuit of truth (however diverse the perceptions of it may be) or should it be judged a case of indefensible slander that is both demonstrably malevolence and mendacious ?

Pls disseminate this information to as wide a circle of recipients as possible. If you have access to mailing lists/Jewish student organizations at USC, Layola, UCLA etc pls use them to inform people of the facts.

Just like Prevention, Preemption is better than Cure

Best wishes

Dr. Martin Sherman, Visiting Schusterman Israel Scholar – USC/HUC

ISRAEL’S CONTROL OF WATERAS A TOOL OF APARTHEID AND

MEANS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING

SPEAKER:

Omar Barghouti

An independent Palestinian researcher and human rights activist, Mr. Barghouti is a founding member of PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Sunday

November 1

4-6 PM

LoyolaLawSchool

919 Albany Street

Los Angeles, CA90015

Access to water is a fundamental human right

Israelis gets 83% of water from aquifers in the occupied West Bank, West Bank Palestinians get what’s left.

Israel’s overpumping of the coastal aquifer, its closures and its military attacks on infrastructure limit Palestinian access to water in the Gaza Strip.

80,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel have no running water or sewage systems.

LoyolaLawSchool provides a forum for the dissemination of diverse viewpoints to promote the examination of important academic and social issues. This does not mean that LoyolaLawSchool endorses those viewpoints.

Omar BARGHOUTI is a leading organizer in the international movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel.He is coming to the United States for a multi-city tour to build support for the growing and powerful international BDS movement.We urge you to attend and publicize the events and take this opportunity to learn more about the movement.

"To have a dialogue you have to have a certain minimal level of a common denominator based on a common vision for the ultimate solution based on equality and ending injustice. If you don't have that common denominator than it's negotiation between the stronger and weaker party and, as I've written elsewhere, you can't have a bridge between them but only a ladder where you go up or down not across ... I call this the master/slave type of coexistence ... A master and a slave can also reach an agreement where this is reality and you cannot challenge it and you make the best out of it. There is no war, no conflict, nobody is killing anybody, but a master remains a master and the slave remains a slave -- so this is not the kind of peace that we the oppressed are seeking -- the minimum is to have a just peace. Only with justice can we have a sustainable peace. So dialogue does not work -- it has not worked in reality and cannot work in principle. Boycotts have worked in reality and in principle so there is absolutely no reason why they cannot work, because Israel has total impunity given the official support it gets from the west in all fields (economic, cultural, academic and so on). Without raising the price of its oppression, it will never give up; it will never concede on any of our rights."Omar Barghouti, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10562.shtml

Los Angeles

November 1: β€Palestine: Thirsting for Justice. Israelβ€™s Control of Water as a Tool of Apartheid and a Means of Ethnic Cleansingβ€, 4 pm, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

November 2: β€Justice, Freedom and the Ethical Role of Intellectuals: The Question of Palestineβ€, 7 pm, 101 Taper Hall of the Humanities, University of Southern California; introduced by Ruth W. Gilmore, respondent Arieh Saposnik, Gilbert Chair in Israel Studies, UCLA.

November 4: 7pm, "Debating academic boycott: A quest for justice in Palestine", Cowles Auditorium, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Introduced by Bruce Braun, Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota.

November 5: 7-9 pm, Columbia University, New York, debating the motion β€BDS against Israel is counterproductive to the pursuit of a just peace in the Middle East.β€

November 6: 2:00-4:00 PM at New York University with Nancy Kricorian from Code Pink (Ahava Boycott Campaign) and Ryvka Bar Zohar from The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI) (Motorola Boycott Campaign).

November 7: Panel: 12-1.45 pm, "Academic Freedom and the Right to Education: The Question of Palestine", with Fred Moten, David Lloyd, and Steven Salaita, American Studies Association, in the auditorium of the Renaissance Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Literally thousands of people all over the world are working very hard to demonize and delegitimize Israel. An especially strident and persuasive voice is that of Omar Barghouti, whose devastating accusations against Israel can be found on dozens of internet sites, newspapers all over the world and even at international conferences. What makes his work especially repugnant is his wide use of half-truth, selective omission and outright lie. He is clearly an enemy of Israel.

We recently learned that he is a doctoral student at the Tel Aviv University. If this is indeed true, it is quite incredible because Omar Barghouti is a founding member of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and has personally called on countless occasions, for an international boycott of all Israeli universities as well as trade and cultural ties.

About Tel Aviv University itself, he has written (in Counterpunch): “Tel Aviv University refuses to date to acknowledge the fact that it sits on top of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village (Sheikh Muwannis). Some of TAU's departments are also organically linked to the military and intelligence establishment.”

We can’t help wondering at the logic of Tel Aviv University according this enemy of Israel with the means to obtain a doctorate in Ethics. Can this indeed be true? Ethics!!! As Israeli citizens we also deeply dismayed that an academic institution, which gets part of our hard-earned taxes to keep it going, is enabling such a person to use its facilities. We are sure a lot of Jews around the world who donate generously to academic institutions in Israel would be quite devastated to learn how their monies are used.

There could be three solutions to this incredible situation:

1. Properly knowledgeable and motivated staff members could engage Omar Barghouti in a sincere debate on the whole Israel-Arab conflict in order to persuade him to rethink his position. Surely ethics (if that’s what he’s studying) should be based on intellectual honesty.

2. Find a way to sue him for libel and false pretences and anything else.

3. Simply disassociate from him (and any others of his ilk who cramp the corridors of your university).